Three Cauldron-Made relics — the Mask, the Harp, and the Crown — that together confer power over death, distance, and will.
The Dread Trove
“The Mask can raise the dead. It is a death mask, molded from the face of a long-forgotten king. Wear it and you may summon the dead to you, command them to march at your will.”
Amren · A Court of Silver Flames
The Dread Trove is a set of three artifacts forged by the Cauldron in ancient times: the Mask, which raises and commands the dead; the Harp, which opens any door, bends space, and on its twenty-sixth string halts time itself; and the Crown, which bends the strongest mind to the wearer's will.
Amren catalogues them for Nesta as among the most dangerous objects in Prythian. Hunted by the withered Queen Briallyn and the death-lord Koschei, the Trove is run down piece by piece across A Court of Silver Flames — until Nesta Archeron, Made from the same dark source, ends the book holding all three.
At a glance
The Trove
What it is
Three Made objects
The Dread Trove is three artifacts forged by the Cauldron when its power was at its wildest. Each is a tool of dominion over a different domain — death, distance, and will — and each carries its own dark pull. Amren explains the set to Nesta when the Night Court realises the Trove is in play: possessing all three historically conferred near-limitless power, and the objects can also be used to locate the scattered remnants of the Cauldron itself. That is why they cannot be allowed to fall to the wrong hands.
Why it matters
The hunt
Queen Briallyn — a mortal queen who volunteered to be Made and was punished by the Cauldron into a withered fae crone — allied with the death-lord Koschei and went hunting the Trove: to invade Prythian, find the Cauldron's remains, reverse her aging, and take revenge on Nesta, who had taken power from the Cauldron during her own Making. Rhysand's court races to secure the relics first. Nesta, scrying with the divination Amren teaches her, locates them one by one.
Nesta's claim
Made from the same source
Because Nesta was Made — reborn from the Cauldron — the Trove answers her: “like calls to like.” She can wield each piece without being ruled by it, an exception ordinary wearers do not get (the Mask, for one, can normally only be removed by beheading its wearer). She retrieves the Mask from the drowned dead of the Bog of Oorid, draws the Harp from beneath the Prison (freeing the ancient Lanthys in the process), and takes the Crown after Unmaking Briallyn. By the end of A Court of Silver Flames she keeps all three — and in the finale she plays the Harp's twenty-sixth string — Time itself — to halt the instant of Feyre's death, buying the moment she needs to save Feyre, the newborn Nyx, and Rhysand, bargaining her taken power back to the Cauldron in exchange.
The three objects
What the Trove holds
Each relic commands a different domain. Together they were among the most dangerous things in Prythian.
The Trove's hands
Who holds & hunts it
From the page
Verbatim canon
“A golden mask sat upon her face, primitive but embossed with whorls and patterns so ancient they had lost all meaning.”
A Court of Silver Flames